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Theo and Sarah vanReijn

Bio

Theo van Reijn was born in the Netherlands, where his parents served as missionaries for over 30 years. His father is a Dutchman who was a vocational church planter in the Netherlands. He heard the gospel through his parents' faithful teaching, and his mother had the joy of leading him to Christ when he was a young boy. The Lord called Theo into the ministry during his teenage years and gave him a burden to serve the Lord in his home country.

Theo received his ministerial and theological training at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina where he obtained a Master of Divinity in 2007. During his college years he also met his wife Sarah, and they were married in July of 2002. The Lord has blessed them with four children, Peter, Miriam, Luke, and Elizabeth (Ella).

Sarah van Reijn was born in Richmond, Virginia. She trusted Christ as a young child and still remembers the wonderful forgiveness that salvation brings. During her high school years, she attended the summer music camps at Bob Jones University. The Lord used the daily preaching to work in her heart a definite, growing submission to the Lord and His will for her life. Later, as a student at Bob Jones University, Sarah received her undergraduate degree in Music Education and her graduate degree in Church Music.

The van Reijns departed for the Netherlands on October 20, 2010. Their goal is to plant churches in the primarily Roman Catholic province of Limburg. The area is commonly recognized as one of the hardest areas of the Netherlands to reach with the Gospel.

Strong family ties and a wariness of non-Catholic religious groups keep people loyal to their Catholic traditions. Using widespread evangelism as well as personal, evangelistic Bible studies, the van Reijns desire to communicate the Gospel clearly in an increasingly Bible-illiterate society.

They envision two main phases of ministry. First, they will endeavor to establish a church which can serve as a mother church for future church plants.

The target location for the church plant is the city of Landgraaf, which is part of a cluster of cities in the province of Limburg with a total population of 250,000.

Currently there are several believers living in the target area who will make up the core group, as well as others who are planning to move into the area for the purpose of joining the core group. Once the church in Landgraaf is established and financially independent, the second phase of our mission will be the training of men to go out as church planters from the mother church into other locations in the Netherlands. With each additional church plant, the base of churches that can participate in new church plants will grow. The exciting potential of this model is the exponential growth that can take place over time.